Some lesbian friends recently came to visit the Gay Uncle and his boyfriend at their house Upstate. And guess what? They’re trying to get pregnant! This is good news for Gunc, as it means at least one more guaranteed sale of his book. But instead of adopting an unwanted American child, or trying to steal one from the arms of its family in Malawi, they’re going the donor route. The G.U. is down with this too. But he has to admit that when they started talking about the specifics of why they chose a particular dude from the list of tens of thousands of cum shots that the Sperm Bank had in their deposit accounts, he got a little…creeped out. “He’s Italian like me, but he’s not one of those short Italians because his mother was from Denmark or Norway or something, so he’s tall. And everyone on both sides of his family has good teeth. And he has eyes like her [her partner]. And no history of heart disease or cancer. And I found out on line that they have an attractiveness scale that they use internally at the Sperm Bank to rate the donors when they come in. It ranges from two to eight point five, and when I asked the lady where he rated, she said, Eight. And when I asked how many eight point fives they’d ever seen, she said, One. So he’s our guy.” Now Gunc is down with giving your kid all the proper advantages. And he supposes when offered choices on stuff like this, he’d tend toward ticking off some of the same checkboxes. But there’s just something borderline…Eugenicist about the whole process: picking out a kid–like a handbag or sweater–who’ll match your skin and eyes, selecting a donor based on his similarity in appearance to an idealized version of yourself. It just seems like a set up for an even worse form of narcissism than the one normally derived from participating in what Gunc likes to call “The Ultimate Vanity Project”. Maybe straight people pick their partners for the same reasons: they’ll breed well? Or maybe the G.U. is the only one who finds it odd. Let him know what you think in COMMENTS below.
Tribune Writer Seeks Parents
The Gay Uncle’s second favorite newspaper journalist, Heidi Stevens, is starting up a new feature in the Sunday Tribune newspapers. It’s a column where parents write in with questions, and then other parents chime in with advice. (And then an expert–like Gunc–comes in and provides two more cents.) To get the ball rolling, Heidi has some starter topics, but is looking for parents who are interested in dishing out tips. Here are the first few queries:
*Your preschooler wants to wear her princess nightgown everywhere””summer camp, grocery store, the airport. How do you get her to shed the pink uniform and don some real clothes?
*Your 5-year-old refuses to pick up his room. Time-outs don”t work and you”ve tried taking away everything he cherishes””toys, TV shows, dessert. What now?
*Your heretofore loving, sweet-natured 3-year-old has started saying “I hate you”ť whenever she doesn”t get her way. How should you respond?
*Your 6-year-old pretends everything is a gun. How do you nip that in the bud?
If you’re interested in garnering fifteen lines of fame, and have practical ideas for remedying any of these, you can email your info and solutions directly to Heidi: hstevens@tribune.com
Oh, Daddy
Stumped about what to get that special daddy in your life? Worried that a manscaping kit, three pairs of boxer briefs, and a gift certificate for a facial might give him the wrong impression? Wishing that he was just a little…smarter about the whole fathering thing? Well, there’s only one present that will solve for all of these issues: a copy of The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting. And it’s available at all the best stores, chain or independent (link-listed below)–you pick based on your own silly little arcane rules. But order today to make sure it gets there in time, or you’ll reap no rewards for your thoughtfulness; everyone knows daddy hates it when you’re fucking late.
Off the Tracks
The Gay Uncle read a report the other day about how some holdout school districts are giving up their strict tracking systems–in which children are graded and then grouped by ability throughout their tenure in a school–and all he can say is, Finally. While he sees some value in programs at the upper grade levels that give high achieving students the opportunity to push themselves further, he has always been a firm believer in mixed-ability grouping for younger kids. Why? Well, for a few core reasons. First, in these environments, kids learn from one another–and this learning isn’t just one-sided with the Eagles teaching the Pigeons (though this is part of it). Think about how much more deeply a concept has to make sense for you in order to explain it to someone who doesn’t get it. Think about how much more excited you get about a topic you understand when you share that understanding with someone who connects to it as well, especially someone who connects for the first time. Think about how good and smart you feel when someone else lights up with the comprehension of something you’ve described for them. Second, think how much more readily able you are to take in information when it comes informally from a peer or colleague than from a supervisor. Kids feel this as well. Sometimes content that falls flat when presented by the teacher becomes enlivened, or a part of a social exchange, when delivered or moderated by another kid. Third, kids have all sorts of different forms of intelligence, and segregating kids based solely on one kind limits their exposure to, and potential to build skills in, others. Thinking skills, even higher order thinking skills, are only one of the things we hope kids derive from attending school. We also want them to be well rounded people, to learn to engage with the arts, to become adequate social beings, to gain empathy and sympathy and other emotional knowledge, to appreciate and embrace difference, to gain a sense of humor, to learn the value of physical activity. A mixed “ability” grouping is much more likely to contain kids with strengths in all of these areas than one tracked by a sole variable.
Finally–and most importantly–think how much more successful this country could be at fulfilling its promise if everyone was given the opportunity to achieve, not just the people who already had a leg up. Isn’t this the whole point of “America”? Gunc has said it over and again, in a country like ours where the individual is king, schools are anathema. Schools are about the collective good: about working together to balance the needs of the individual with the larger goals of the good of the group and of society. A quality school will make sure that each child is attended to within this context, bet even the best schools by necessity and design will ask parents, kids, and teachers to sacrifice some of their individual desires for the benefit of the whole. Parents often see this solely as a deficit. But education exists not simply to serve (your child’s) individual needs, but also to help foster group achievement, as well as to develop practices that are key to the smooth functioning of civil society.
Disney’s “Up” Heads Six Feet Under
The Gay Uncle hasn’t seen the new movie, “Up”, but apparently an old woman dies in it. Obviously, this is not the first Disney film in which a female character buys the farm. In fact, Gunc is having a hard time remembering a Mickey-flick in which one doesn’t bite it. But in “Up”, the depiction is a bit more straightforward and unobscured than usual, and the bereaved is not a mermaid, a princess, or an adorable baby deer, but an increasingly embittered old man. So when the G.U.’s second-favorite newspaper columnist, Heidi Stevens, heard all this, who do you think she turned to for advice about how to discuss Grim Reaping with kids without scaring the shit out of them? That’s right: everyone’s second-favorite Gay Uncle parenting guru. The results of their conversation are in this Sunday’s Chicago Tribune.
Top Car
In yet another story that combines the Gay Uncle’s dual interests in children and automobiles (remember, he’s also the author of Stick Shift, Vanity Fair’s weekly online car column), Gunc has recently discovered that the best-selling car this past year was not one produced by the Big 3 (a.k.a. the Big 1 + Big Bankrupt 2). Neither was it a Japanese model, or one from some upstart automotive country like Korea. Nope. Rather the top selling car was this awesome, sporty, red two-door, the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. It’s been a rough year for the auto industry, but this must be some devastating news, even for them. No less so because as they try to innovate and match the changing tastes of the fickle American consumer, the Cozy Coupe has been virtually unchanged since it was brought out over thirty years ago. No airbags. No side-impact beams. No emission controls. No brakes. (Unless you count junior’s footsies, which power and stop the car, Flintstone-style.) Moreover, guess what? The dumpy little piece of plastic is manufactured right here in the United States, employing our local laborers and poisoning our local streams with its effluents, instead of killing some poor Chinese kids. Go America! We’re still tops in something. Gunc is uncertain if the Obama administrations new “Cash for Clunkers” law will pertain to this vehicle, so he’s not certain you can get some incentive to purchase a new one. And it might not work out so well for your commuter duties, unless you’ve recently been laid off and don’t have anywhere to be. But he feels that you could do worse than stimulate the economy by running out and buying one for the kids. So long as your house is not at the top of a steep hill.
Bullyshit
According to a piece the Gay Uncle just read in the New York Times, our nation’s pediatricians are recommending (through their affinity organization the American Academy of Pediatrics) that doctors and schools get involved in helping to prevent bullying. They’re pushing a protocol that has been developed and proven to work throughout Scandanavia, one that focuses on activating the perception of bullying as a problem that affects everyone, and thus requires everyone’s participation in order to solve–not just the bullyer and bullyee, but also the “bystanders”. Gunc applauds this. When he began running his school fifteen-plus years ago, he implemented a policy that required all kids to be aware, and mandated reporters, of incidents of exclusion and cruelty, and had his staff involved in providing not only remedies for these transgressions, but also guided suggestions as to how the problem could be solved differently in the future. In other words, a three-phase process that included: 1) A clear policy that provided a role for all members 2) Recourse for when issues arose and 3) Constructive discussions and modeling to help all members through their like problems in future situations.
Sadly, it seems the AAP’s recommendations–like most policies in this country–are REactive instead of PROactive, and where they’re not, they tend to focus almost solely on rescuing the “victim” of the situation, and make no recommendations for how to help the “perpetrator”. (Sort of like how we handle incarceration.) The Gay Uncle is hardly a forgiving person at heart, but he understands that young kids not only need lots of chances in order to understand, incorporate, integrate, and synthesize new rules, they also need to be repeatedly absolved of their minor sins (and even, sometimes, some of their seemingly major ones) and given additional opportunities to practice things the right way if we want them to grow up into reasonable humans. Which, he thinks, is kind of the long-term point of childhood. A zero tolerance approach to bullying is a compelling goal. But in attempting to achieve it, the G.U. believes in being much more tolerant, and in providing skills to everyone involved. Kids grow up to be much more understanding and forgiving if they’re understood and forgiven. This goes for bullied and bullier and bystander alike.
A Parent AND a Person
Some readers took issue with Gunc’s recent suggestion that parents take some time out to balance their micro-managing and hovering with some “me time” (and by me, he doesn’t mean the G.U.; he means YOU.) So he thought he would provide further explanation of why this is important.
While it is against the law in many states to leave a child under eleven alone, it is truly criminal for you to wait until they’re that old to take some time for yourself. There is no way that you can perform optimally at any job without breaks–let alone a job that runs 24/7 for your entire life. Being a parent shouldn’t be seen as a selfless act of martyrdom any more than not having a child should be construed as selfish. It’s a decision. And like any decision, you should be allowed to react to, resent, or regret it, so long as you don’t do it too often (boring), with too much vehemence (dramatic), or in front of your kid (cruel and borderline abusive). Taking time out from parenting–alone, with friends, at a government bunker–keeps you in touch with yourself. Without this outlet, you are likely to derive you notions of self-worth solely from your child. They cant, and shouldn’t, be the only source to deliver this to you.
Blackhawk Down
Suddenly, the Gay Uncle read this morning, the New York Times is all about how the era of “Helicopter” parenting–in which mothers and fathers hover and obsess over their child’s every decision–might be coming to an end. But what have they chosen to replace it with? A new, invented trend. “Bad” parenting, in which parents confess to having needs of their own, live social lives outside of their children’s, and hold concerns that go beyond the quality and quantity of their child’s shit.
This doesn’t sound like “Bad” parenting to Gunc. This sounds like “sane” parenting. So long as these so called bad parents maintain some adherence to the idea that raising a kid requires it to be, if not your #1 priority, at least in the top 3. (Having it be your SOLE priority is where the problems tend to come in–for parent and child alike.)
The G.U. would like to propose that the parenting pendulum does not have to swing between the twin poles of all-in attachment, and Valium-addled neglect. Bandwagons depart for greener pastures. Helicopters crash. Negligence leads to jail time. The Gay Uncle believes in BALANCE (and in understanding how kids work and what they need). Say it with him: “I am a parent and a person.” Now remind yourself of Gunc’s mantra: “Pretend you’re the grownup.” Now, go do your job.
Spelunking Safety (Nasal Edition)
It’s allergy season, which means that the Gay Uncle is all schnootzig. The only relief seems to come at night when the contents of his nose cake up for the duration of his slumber. Once morning arises, this naturally brings up the issue of getting that stuff out of there. How does this connect to young children? Well, since they’re constantly acquiring germs from other kids, they deal with Gunk-in-the-Trunk (as in Elephant’s trunk) all time. And while a tissue is great when they have a runny or stuffy nose, the Gay Uncle believes that nothing trumps a finger for excavating the hard clumpy stuff. You know what he’s talking about. Nose Picking.
The G.U. is a believer in some level of propriety, so he doesn’t want to eat dinner with a kid whose finger is permanently inserted in their nostril. But he thinks it’s fine to let you kid dig around in their schnoz away from the prying eyes of the general public. (You can decide if this includes you or not.) Frankly, teaching them to self-pick is a hell of a lot less grody than having to go spelunking in there yourself. Just be sure to alert them as to where you believe nasal mining is acceptable, and where it isn’t. And in the not okay places, you can teach them to hide their activities behind what Gunc likes to call The Social Shroud (Kleenex).
Finally, if your kid is going to dive in unprotected, make sure their nails are clipped–we don’t need any more blood on our hands in this country–and that they wash their mitts before and after; finger-to-nose contact is one of the top means by which colds are transmitted. (Allergies, sadly, are non-transferable.)